“Please watch your step as you exit,” he said through the intercom. “I’d feel terrible if you tripped and wrecked your face. Not you, sir,” he added. “Your face is a disaster. No one would notice.”
The crowd—on board and off—laughed jovially.
Marigold raised her eyebrows.
A door popped open and North Drummond stepped into view. Her heart hammered against her rib cage. He swiftly jumped down from a platform on the back of the car to the main platform and then held out a hand to help an elderly woman disembark. “Goodbye,” he said. He wasn’t using the intercom anymore, but Marigold could still hear every word. “Please tell your friends. We’re trapped in the boonies, and we’re desperately lonely. We could use the company.”
The woman chuckled and patted his hand.
Marigold wasn’t sure why she felt so startled. Maybe it was because she hadn’t seen him since April, but it was as if North’s expression had been frozen in time. Despite his droll smile, his eyes held the same heavy weariness. The same edge of exasperation. Or maybe it was his uniform, which made him look like a junior park ranger. He was dressed entirely in pale blue. Powder blue. A powder-blue, short-sleeved, button-up shirt, powder-blue shorts that hit just above his knees, and a powder-blue hat that looked sort of like a baseball cap, only taller. And more awkward. In tidy white letters, two words had been stitched onto the front of it: FUNICULAR OPERATOR.
When the last passenger exited, he hopped back onto the car’s short platform, using its guardrail to help swing himself up as if he’d done it a hundred times before. Marigold realized, disconcertingly, that perhaps he had.
“Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys,” he announced, “I’ll need you to board this car one at a time. Politely. Not like the jerks that you actually are.”
The crowd laughed again as they queued into a single-file line. Marigold hesitated near the back, hiding between two bikers with thick arms and wizard beards. Trying to be invisible. Trying to think. She’d thought it would have been easy enough to get him alone, but she hadn’t expected to find him … doing a routine? Was that what this was?
A ranger in khaki hurried past, signaling something to North. He nodded, the middle-aged woman took his place, and he jogged off toward the park office.
Marigold watched anxiously as he disappeared into the log-and-stone building. The line moved forward as passengers continued to board. Would he return? Should she wait out here? She couldn’t see him through the office’s windows.
“Come on, sweetheart. You’re up.”
Marigold looked back, agitated, to find the ranger signaling for her to board. “Um.” It came out as a stammer. “Uh…”
The ranger’s hand gestures grew more impatient.
“Is he—is that guy coming back?”
The woman nodded brusquely. “He’s on his way right now.”
Marigold glanced over her shoulder to find North striding toward them, halfway across the main platform. Like a startled rabbit, she shot up and into the car. It wasn’t flat, like a cable car on the street. It was built to match the mountain’s natural incline, and the wooden benches faced backward—toward the view. The front of the car, the best seats, were already taken, so she hustled down the sloping aisle and onto a middle bench. It was as far away from the back—where North would be standing—as she could get.
“Thank you, Kathy.” His voice clicked on over the intercom, and Marigold heard him shut the door. “I’ll take it again from here.”
She could have at least waved to show him she was here. Why had her first instinct been to run? Marigold sank into her seat, flaming with regret. The car smelled like body odor and old machinery. Its windows were closed and revealed traces of rain earlier in the day. The atmosphere felt stuffy. Claustrophobic. It was too late, that was the worst part. At some point—some point very soon—North would discover her, and for the rest of his life, she’d be a silly anecdote he’d tell to friends and future girlfriends.
“Greetings, good afternoon, and welcome to Mount Mitchell State Park,” he said. “Because you’re all lazy, you’ve chosen to sit your way to the summit, when you could have easily walked it instead.”
As the other passengers groaned with good nature, Marigold heard him pressing buttons and flipping a switch. The small car lumbered into motion.
“Out the front window, you’ll find spectacular views of the Black Mountain range—part of the larger Blue Ridge range, part of the even larger Appalachian range—and out the side windows, you’ll find that we’re rising at a near-horizontal incline. I cannot stress this fact enough: It truly isn’t a difficult hike. Denali, the tallest mountain west of the Mississippi, has an elevation of 20,310 feet. We’re headed up to 6,684 feet. This funicular should not exist. Unfortunately, it does, so we’re stuck here together for the next nine minutes.”
More laughter and guffaws. The travel-fatigued parents seemed relieved to have someone else entertaining their children, if only for this fleeting respite. But Marigold felt surrounded by his voice. Cornered by it. Beside her, a couple in their late twenties with ironic hobo hairstyles was snapping carefree, square-shaped selfies. She hunkered down even lower and peered through the slats on the back of their bench.
North had one hiking boot–clad foot propped up on a metal box. His left hand held the intercom, while his right hand rested on his thigh. It was an oddly masculine pose for someone so casually flashing his bare knees and calves in such absurd blue shorts. “The first rails were laid over a century ago, and they’ve only undergone minimal repairs since. But have no fear; this antique rattletrap breadbox is safe and sound.” He pounded on a wall for emphasis. It was not a sturdy noise.
The rickety car joggled and clattered, beneath and around her, but nothing else was matching up to her childhood memories. It was true that the mountain didn’t seem very steep, and she also didn’t remember the operator delivering such a gimmicky spiel. He sounded like a skipper on the Jungle Cruise at Disney World.
“I’m delighted to say that it’s been almost three weeks since my last derailment,” North continued, “and I only lost half of my passengers.”
Marigold marveled at his propped-up leg. They’d dated in colder weather, pants weather, so she’d never seen his legs outside in broad daylight. They were tan and muscular and hairy. She would’ve guessed that hairy legs might be kind of gross, but they weren’t. They were manly.
Everything about North made him seem older than his age. It wasn’t just his voice or his legs. He was tall and broad—brawny was the word that most frequently came to mind—from years of hard farm labor. He listened to NPR and had dreams of becoming a radio broadcaster. His vocabulary was considerable, and he’d consciously dropped his rural accent at a young age. He could also be a bit grumpy and curmudgeonly, though with a tenderness and thoughtfulness to his actual actions that she found rather charming. Marigold used to joke that he was born to be someone’s grandfather.
The hipsters beside her had stopped Instagramming. Conscious of their wary side-eyes, Marigold whipped her head forward again, wincing with embarrassment. She slid back up, slowly, into an almost normal sitting position. As if there weren’t anything suspicious about her behavior. As if she weren’t being a total creep.